Rob Kempson is a theatre artist and educator. A graduate of queen’s university, rob works as a playwright, director, and performer. Writer/director: Mockingbird (Next Stage Theatre Festival); Shannon 10:40 (Timeshare); explicit (Rhubarb Festival); #legacy (Harbourfront Centre); in my own skin (YRDSB); the HV project (Community); intersections (TDSB Arts co-op). Director: Violet’s the pilot, Rose’s Clothes (Thousand Islands Playhouse); Songs for a New World (Claude Watson). As a performer, he was most recently seen starring in his Dora-nominated musical The Way Back to Thursday (Theatre Passe Muraille). He was a member of the 2014 Stratford Festival Playwrights’ Retreat, and is currently a resident artist educator at Young People’s Theatre and the Associate Artistic Director at the Thousand Islands Playhouse.
http://www.robkempson.com
Twitter: @rob_kempson
Trigonometry
Gabriella wants action. Jackson wants a scholarship. Susan wants a family. In this new play by Rob Kempson, three disparate people find themselves bound together by desire, destiny, and a few scandalous photos. Trigonometry is about how far we go to get what we want: what we do to survive.
https://trigonometrytheplay.com/
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Transcript
Transcript auto generated.
Phil Rickaby
Welcome to Episode 68 of Stageworthy. I’m your host Phil Rickaby. Stageworthy is a podcast featuring conversations in Canadian theatre with actors, directors, playwrights and more. If you want to drop Stageworthy, Elian you can find us on Facebook and Twitter at stageworthypod. And you can find the website called stageworthypodcast.com. If you like what you hear, I hope you’ll consider leaving a comment or rating on iTunes or whatever podcast app you use. Comments really help people find the show. My guest is Rob Kempson. Rob is a theatre artist and educator. His play trigonometry opens March 16, and runs until March 25, at Toronto’s Factory Theatre.
Tell me about trigonometry the play. I mean, yeah, so I’m one of those people who like math is one of those things that I avoid. So trigonometry, the play, how much of it has to do with math? And like, tell me about Tell me about that show? Yeah,
Rob Kempson
it’s, I don’t like math either. So let’s start there. I, I, I didn’t. I did okay, in math in high school. So it wasn’t an issue of like, having sort of a strong aversion to it forever. I just never liked it. But when I started writing the play, I was really inspired by Sarah rules, book 100 essays, I don’t have time to write. And in there, she talks a lot about play structure and several of the essays. And in one of them, she in particular talks about the structure of the ark and why we conceive of the Ark as the shape that is ideal for plays, which I thought was a really interesting thought, just because it’s not something that had ever crossed my mind. Certainly, I’ve worked in different structures before but thinking about the association with a given shape was a new idea for me. And just sort of offhandedly she questions, you know, what would happen if a play was a triangle play or a square play? And I wondered, What if a trade play was a triangle play? And so then I started thinking about what that would mean, structurally. And it’s actually from there that I moved into the play being called trigonometry. And that the, the one of the characters is a math teacher, teaching trigonometry. And so it was, in fact, out of the structure of the play, this idea of this triangle, that I started to explore how deep I could run those routes, and then it ended up turning into part of the story, too.
Phil Rickaby
Did you figure out what a triangle play looks like?
Rob Kempson
I mean, I hope so. I don’t know if I have or not at that for me. If you know, trigonometry, and you’re like particularly interested in sort of the the math aspect of the play, the play is designed around the three trigonometric functions, which are sine, cosine, and tangent. And each of those functions basically allows you to calculate different things based on the relationship between angles and length of sides on a right angle, triangle, and eventually any triangle, but primarily a right angled triangles. And so and so in writing the play, I have each scene explores one of those functions. So the first thing is sine, and that’s opposite over hypotenuse is how you would calculate that. And the second thing is cosine. And that’s adjacent over hypotenuse, which is how that’s calculated. And then the third scene is tan, and that arrow tangent, and that is opposite over adjacent. And that’s all in the calculation of a given angle, relationship. But, but in the play, I’ve sort of extrapolated on that idea, assigned each of the three characters to a part of the triangle, and then played with the idea that one character starts in a given power, or status sort of structure over another character based on these trigonometric functions. And so if you’re like a real math nerd, and that’s interesting to you, then you can figure that out, right? Or a theatre nerd who like pretends to be a math nerd for a minute like I am, but there’s only one actual equation in the play. So I think it’s a triangle play in the sense that I’ve tried really hard to use that structure to my advantage and not push against it too much. Does the play at all So have an arc. Yeah, I mean, I hope so I hope that you walk out of it feeling like the characters have gone on a journey, right. But I do think that structurally the play works in these sort of three separate sections. Yeah. Cool.
Phil Rickaby
Did you Was there something in particular that you were inspired by aside from the triangle, or the trigonometry for this?
Rob Kempson
Yeah, this is the third play in my series, the graduation plays. And each of the graduation plays are plays that examine the sort of complexity of relationships between teachers and students in high school environment. And each of the plays really are about a time when a student disrupts a power structure. So in a school, we assume that the power is concurrent, I guess, are coincident with the authority. So the principal is at the top, followed by the Vice Principal, followed by department heads, etc. And students are at the bottom. And I am really interested in these three works about are interested in the way that students can take back power and throw off that traditional structure. So I like in this play to the other two, they’re they’re all thematically related, you don’t have to have seen any of them to understand the next one, because they don’t have characters who across all three rights or anything, but they’re all kind of about the same thing. They’re about a student disrupting a power structure in a high school. And the way that I enter into them is from a different perspective. So the first place and in 1040, which we did a video fg in 2015 is arguably primarily a student perspective into that problem. Mockingbird, which I did the next stage Festival in 2016, is a teacher perspective into that problem. And trigonometry, I think, is a parent’s perspective. Okay. And so the inspiration for all of them come from the fact that I work a lot in schools, both as a guest artist and as a as a supply teacher, and I have my bachelor bed. And teaching is a really important part of my artistic practice. Yeah,
Phil Rickaby
that was actually going to be my next My next question is what it was that draws you into the idea of students disrupting that structure? Yeah. Have you seen that? How? Oh, my
Rob Kempson
gosh, it happened to me yesterday, okay. I was, I was in a school that shall remain nameless teaching for a teacher who I have great respect for it because a good friend of mine, and an A student hijacked my class. And it’s not the first time that’s ever happened. But a student hijacking the class, meaning that like they know, how to they know enough about the system that they know how to disrupt it from within it. Does that makes sense. And one of the things that I have found, and this didn’t happen yesterday, but one of the things that I’ve found or seen a lot is that a lot of that ends up coming from students expression of sexuality in some capacity, so exerting themselves as sexual beings, because teachers don’t have any kind of a defence against that, right? Because they can’t talk about it in schools, because the sex ed curriculum is quite rigid and not, in fact, very progressive. Although this play deals with sort of the new sex ed curriculum that was first introduced in 2015, and then was protested and then protested again, anyways, is now in place, sort of, but, but that disabling of a teacher’s sort of all of the things that they have in their toolkit, it’s something that’s really interesting to me, it’s also terrifying when it happens as a teacher like that you, you can’t do anything. So yesterday, like a student hydroponic class, just by being a jerk, and sort of getting crazy, and then another student filmed my interaction with that student. And that filming of it is, in fact, the plot point of Shannon 1040, which is the first series, but I’m certainly not embarrassed by anything that happened in that interaction, I wouldn’t be worried about anyone seeing that video. But because students have cell phones, and they have access to technology, and all of that stuff, social media, and etc. starts to blur the lines. Yes, yeah. And, you know, I have students try to add me on Facebook and Instagram and Twitter all the time, of course. And, and you really have to, there’s no specific rules about how that works. I know lots of teachers who have their students on Facebook, and I know lots of teachers who don’t even have Facebook, and I know, everything in between. So the blurring of those lines, is actually I think, a really good indicator of the blurring of lines that happen in person to you know, that the teaching is ultimately a human thing. It’s a human art form. It’s imperfect. And I think that those environments are rich for really complex confrontations and interactions and and I you know, it’s a right place to write a play have
Phil Rickaby
just just the idea that whatever you do in that class, there’s somebody who has a phone and could kind of film it. Yeah, I’m certainly record of that
Rob Kempson
well, and that you have a phone in that class too, right? Like, it’s sort of you extrapolate on it and think about all of the ways in which technology in the classroom can affect the classroom. Yeah. So, you know, in the play, certainly, the use of phones, there’s two, two sort of big pieces of plot come from phones. And that’s a, you know, a reflection on our on our current world, but it’s also a reflection on the things that I think are dangerous, and, and terrifying about, about working in schools. As an educator.
Phil Rickaby
Interesting thing, I remember just thinking about seeing in some kind of playwriting or script reading book about how using a phone was achieved. This, of course, was an old book. Yeah, like using having somebody call another person, that’s a cheat. That’s a shortcut. Don’t use that. But now, in a realistic situation, we would not even call we would text. Yeah. And how do we? How does one, you know
Rob Kempson
what I tend to agree with that playwriting book that using a phone is a cheat, just like using a gun is achieved using a gun as a terrible cheat, but using the phone as a cheat in the sense that if you use a phone to reveal information that you could reveal in a different, better written way, then it’s a cheat. Yeah. But if you use the phone as the action of the scene, then it’s not a cheated. If the response to what’s happening on the phone, creates more action. And I don’t think it’s achieved, maybe it is, I don’t know. But in in this play, all of the phone use isn’t about actually using a phone as a phone. It’s about texting or other sort of media and stuff that can happen on a phone. And, and so in particular, in in one of the scenes, every time the character receives a text message, the temper of the scene changes because or temper, that’s not what I’m looking for different word. tambor tone, something of the same changes. And the, the idea is that the phone is instigating some of the conversation that’s happening. And and that’s interesting, because it’s between two adults. One who sort of uses the phone a lot and one who doesn’t. Right. And that becomes a source of conflict. It’s not the main source of conflict. I think when it when phones on stage become a problem now are when people are trying to do things like have Skype conversations on stage, right? Or have a character on their phone? Just scrolling? Because they don’t know what else to do. Yes. Yeah. And I think more broadly, I mean, if we really consider how that then plays to the use of any object on stage, if you’re using any object to fill time, rather than to create an action, then it’s achieved. Yes. Arguably, iPhone just has the unique capacity to actually connect you with other humans. Yeah, but the same thing is true. Like if you you know, look at a computer on stage, or you, you know, projected character in on Skype on stage. Those are in error, non action driven things. Yeah. necessarily. I mean, I guess the line is variable. But
Phil Rickaby
it’s so hard to sort of, because I know the impulse to try to be like, This is what people would do now. Yeah. But does that serve the story? And is it is it really well, best way to do Yeah,
Rob Kempson
I mean, I guess the example is in Mockingbird, my last show, there are no phones on stage. And in fact, we had a conversation during one of the rehearsals where it takes place in a contemporary staff room. It talks about quite contemporary things. There are 11 people in the show. And one of the actors was like, Well, I think my character would probably be like, you know, bored and scrolling through an iPad in this moment, because it’s staffroom. But we have no phones in this show it does this world have phones? And I said, yeah, it totally does. These are just English teachers. They read books, like, you know, they don’t have any they don’t. They don’t they don’t need to scroll through their phones all the time. But it very much takes place in this world. But I also think that from a writing perspective, in that play, I’m looking at a room where I have, you know, the potential to have 11 people in that room. Yeah, I don’t need a phone to drive any of the action. No, I have 11 people. Yeah. Whereas this plan only has three people. And so if I can use some offstage characters, visa vie these phones, then it expands the world and sort of creates a sense of what’s happening outside of the world of the play. And I think that’s one of the most important things about this series for me is that feeling that At the school is omnipresent, right like that you understand this one room or this one direction that you’re seeing is part of a much bigger ecosystem that these characters are living in.
Phil Rickaby
Yeah. I’m so curious about the, your the teaching aspect of your life. Yeah. But I want to come back to that. Yes. First I want to I want to know about why you chose the theatre, as oh, gee, something that you do, like, was there some desire from when you were young that made you want to be an actor? How did you become an actor, playwright, director, producer of your work?
Rob Kempson
Yeah, I mean, I think I’m mostly not an actor anymore. I certainly acted enough times, but it’s not I don’t pursue acting as my professional, I think. I think the reason why I’m in theatre right now, as a playwright and director primarily is because when I go to see a show, and when I want to make a show, all of the considerations that I make, or think about are all the big picture considerations. So I can certainly talk about someone’s performance. Separate from the show, but I’m actually more interested in what does the overall vision of the show look like? What does the
what is the writing doing? How is that driving? I mean, I such a big question. I started working, no. I fell in love with theatre when I saw the Phantom of the Opera when I was seven. Like, I think everyone in my age bracket bracket did.
And, and I fell in love with it. Because you know, there were lots of interesting technical things happening and, you know, magic on stage. But I also fell in love with it, because I remember being seven and being emotionally moved, and crying, and not understanding why I was crying because I wasn’t sad, right? And realising that that kind of power existed, that I that something could be made to make me have an emotional response, but that it’s an emotional response. That’s false, because it’s not my own right? Emotions, right. And I think I was like, pretty wowed by that. And I also didn’t come from a theatre family. So certainly no one in my family knows anything about theatre or plays music or anything like that. And I think, I don’t know, I came out of the womb wanting to like put on shows for people. And I wanted to learn piano, I think I’m the only kid ever who’d like asked my mother to sign me up for piano lessons. And she said, No, because we didn’t have a piano. And she was like, well, that’s silly. How do you like you don’t even know that you want this. And I’m sure I asked her, you know, seven different things a week. So. So eventually, I think it just became clear that the way that I could best communicate was through the arts in some capacity. It became more difficult in high school because I spent a lot of time doing theatre and music, but I was very good in in math and science and those things, so people thought that I should do that. But I think that that’s actually just the sign of like, a type A personality, like I work hard kind of person. And, and a perfectionist, which is like, not necessarily a good thing to have in either of those things. But, but then when I when I went to, I went to Queens, and did concurrent education. And when I first left high school I wanted to do was become a high school drama teacher. And so I went into content so that I could do that. And my intention was to have drama as a third teachable and actually take music and geography because that was much more important. Not thankfully for us. Not thankfully. But thankfully for me, you can’t take a science, physical geography with an art as a double major. Okay? So I ended up taking drama instead as night and then took geography as my third teachable. And then like, by third or fourth year had done enough shows that I thought, I would like to do this instead of just teaching this, I would like to actually do this. So I like I feel like a bit of a late bloomer in that way. Like I certainly wasn’t a kid who my school didn’t participate in this year’s festival, right. I never wrote a play in high school. I never wrote a play in elementary school. I certainly put on like shows for my family, but I it wasn’t really until really even the end of my undergrad that I started conceiving of myself primarily as a writer. And, and yeah, and I guess, sort of meandered my way through from there.
Phil Rickaby
Did you did you become a drama teacher or did you concentrate more on the on doing the theatre?
Rob Kempson
Yeah, I mean, I have been an employee of the Toronto District School Board for the last like day. Engaging, but always as an occasional teacher, so I’ve only ever supply taught. And I like to play teaching. It’s quite fun. There’s a supply teacher in this show. And there wasn’t one of the previous two incarnations, and I thought that that was missing. So ensure that one was a supply teacher in the show. I have been offered some other like teaching contracts, teaching contracts seem to be a little bit easier for me to access than some other contracts. So I’ve, I’ve not taken any full time teaching contracts. But I’ve certainly taught a lot. And then I worked in arts education a lot administratively as well. So I was I worked at young people’s theatre for years in various different capacities. And they’re an amazing organisation where education is really at the heart of the art that they make. I was the Education Manager at Canadian stage for three years. And through my role as the Associate Artistic producer at Theatre pass MRI, a lot of my role was also education focused, it was sort of a split education and then artistic sort of stuff, right. So I did a lot of that work. I was a founding board member for peony, which is the professional arts organisations network for education. And, and now that I work at the 1000 Islands Playhouse as the Associate Artistic Director, right, I direct the kids show that tours to all sorts of communities across eastern Ontario. And I really love that that part of my job. So I often say that, you know, teaching for a lot of people can can become a job job. And certainly everyday is applied teaching is not the most like, personally fulfilling day that I’ve ever had. But teaching will always be a part of my artistic practice. So I teach a lot of high school students, I teach a lot of teachers as a guest artists. So we do a lot of guest artists work where the teacher is in the room, right? I do a lot of guest artists work in professional development days for teachers, that kind of stuff. And I learn from teaching about my own artistic practice. My artistic practice is made better as a result of my teaching, practice. And vice versa. The more art I make, the better teacher I am. The more teaching I do, the better artists am interesting. And for me, those things must be parallel and will always be parallel. Sometimes when the the weight is not equally distributed between the two and more lanes in the education side, I find myself less inspired to sort of be inspired by the work that I’m doing educationally. But I love teaching. I really do. And I’ve worked a lot in community arts too. So I’ve taught, you know, between the ages of five and 85. And I really like working with people of all stripes.
Phil Rickaby
Cool. When you were going through the Queen’s programming, you decide you started writing. Do you remember why you started writing?
Rob Kempson
Yes, yes, I do. It’s not a good reason. I started writing because we had to do directors project for my directing course. And I really couldn’t find a play that I liked. Because they had to be 20 minutes, like they were short, right. And the idea of producing or directing rather, only a scene seemed dumb, I could find lots of plays that I liked, I couldn’t find any 20 minute plays that I liked it and I didn’t want to just do scenes. So I wrote a play. So that I could write that. And then, and then I got a bit hooked on that. So then I did an undergrad thesis in in my final year where I wrote a musical. It’s a really excellent academic exercise and a really terrible musical as a result that I wrote with a friend of mine and and then when I first moved to Toronto, I was writing a musical like a new musical that I knew I was writing and and so then that kind of just seemed like that was the thing I did. And I think I’ve really come to understand that every writer’s process is really, really different. And one of the things that I think we do really well as a community is shaming people for not having the same process as someone else. And we love to talk about like, you know, the writers who get up at six in the morning and make themselves a pot of tea and then sit down at their desk and write for eight hours straight, taking a break only for lunch and then you’ll be the next vocab word or whatever. And that’s never been my process because I am I am fed by the world that I live in. Yeah, artistically. And so for me teaching I I need to know something that’s not just making plays in order to make good plays. Yeah. So teaching is a big part of that. For me,
Phil Rickaby
it’s interesting about the the shaming of practice. You know, people having different practice. I know for me when I’m writing, every time I sit down to write it, I’m working in a different way. Yeah. And I’ve never been one who can like sit down and write for eight hours. I did it once. I was a basket case. Week. And I was reading Stephen King’s book on writing about how, you know, Stephen King who writes like, yeah, you must write like all the time, but apparently, he only writes 1000 words a day. Yeah. And then he puts it away, and it goes into something else.
Rob Kempson
Yeah. You know, I think it I mean, it depends. I did the Stratford playwrights retreat a couple years ago, which is such a great gift. And, and Bob White, who runs that programme, and new play development at Stratford in general, is a genius. And a really kind, supportive, incredible man and incredible dramaturg. And just really, he knows what he’s doing for writers. And the joy of that programme is that you are not expected to hand any specific thing in, you are also not given like actors or anything, you’re just given space, they put you up in a place, they give you like a living wage, so that you don’t have to worry about losing a bunch of money. They pay for your way there, and they pay for your way back. And they say you can go and see the shows if you want or you can not if you want and even come to dinner sometimes if you want, or you can not if you want. And that kind of flexibility. Yeah. Those days, I wrote for eight hours, some of them, you know, because I had, that was that worked, but, but acknowledgement of different processes, I think is a really important part of it. And so for me, you know, what I like to be less busy sometimes like and make less choices based on needing money. Yeah, sure. Yes, I would, as would everyone in any job, I think. But I think my writing is better as a result of my other interests. And And certainly, like, you know, I’ve taught math, yeah, high school, and I’ve taught chemistry and girls, phys, Ed, and law and all sorts of other weird things that I shouldn’t be teaching. And, and those experiences are things that have inspired me to create art out of it. Yeah.
Phil Rickaby
When did you start producing on your own?
Rob Kempson
Well, that’s interesting, because I really resisted the idea of self producing when I first started working and I produced a musical when I first moved to Toronto at the fringe, and it went really relatively well. And then I started getting hired to produce things like I that was part of my jobs that I had. And so I really didn’t want to produce for myself because I knew I couldn’t pay myself so I thought, well, I’ll do this for money and then write for for free. And it took me six years to get all the way back to Thursday produced a theatre pass where I which I was very grateful for that opportunity and to be in their season and all of that sort of stuff. And then I started I had Mockingbird, partially written and Shannon partially written and Shannon 1040 is a two hander. So like that could exist in some many capacities. But Mockingbird. Ultimately, wasn’t 11 person play? Yeah. So prior to that, I mean, I I’ve done a bunch of other projects that I produced myself, like I, but again, they were part of my job. So I did some installation projects that I’ve raised myself. But I was paid by Opera retaliate, or Cass Aloma or whoever. So it was always like part of the work. So sometimes it was producing and creating, but you know, even I did, I produced a show in hatch one year at Harbourfront. Centre, and, but it was also my show, right? You know, and there’s a bit of a stipend there so that you don’t, you know, starve. But when it came to thinking about Mockingbird, you know, I’ve written an 11 person play. I’m, like, early 30s writer, no one is going to ever produce my 11 person play certainly not in this country, but probably no one everywhere. So I if I wanted to see the light of day, I’m gonna have to produce it and I and then I started thinking about how Shannon 1040 was thematically so similar and those plays seem linked to me. And so then I don’t know, I guess I just thought that we should do it. We should. I should make that happen. So for all three plays in this series, I’ve worked with producers who are incredible, incredible. Lisa Lee, who is producing this as a brilliant, brilliant, amazing human being. And Liz Sheffield is produced Shannon 1040 And she is also a brilliant, amazing human being. There are so many great people working in arts, communities, in administrative capacities and in artistic capacity. Brian everything in between. And, and so my, my sort of job as the producer is to kind of take on anything that they don’t want to take on and tell them that I’m spending my money and if it’s okay, and yeah, you know. So I think it became just a situation where like, I knew I had this play that no one was going to ever produce for me. And I didn’t want to wait another six years to find someone to produce the next one or to, you know, keep applying to different festivals or whatever. So I just started, you know, figuring it out.
Phil Rickaby
I have to say, it’s interesting that you sort of allowed yourself to write in love and person play because I think a lot of playwrights with knowing that in our
Rob Kempson
producing violence Yeah, I just wanna make sure it’s on. Is it on? Oh, my gosh, okay. I just saw nothing. No, no. Oh, my God. Yeah, no, no, it’s great. Now making you edit?
Phil Rickaby
No, no, it’s all good. It turns like the producer, like creating a play that has 11 people in it. Yeah. A lot of playwrights who would just be like, well, nobody is going to produce this. I should cut down the number of characters. Yeah, I think it’s brave of you to do that. Yeah.
Rob Kempson
Some say brave, some say stupid. Okay. Like that’s
Phil Rickaby
yes. But, I mean, was there something that, like, did you decide that it could only exist with this with this size? Well,
Rob Kempson
I I like to set myself challenges when I write most of the time. So my musical the way back to Thursday, is a two person show in which it mimics almost exactly the structure of an 18th century sound cycle. Because that seems like something I should try to figure out how to do like, it actually created a bunch of limitations and, and I worked really well with boundaries and limits. So that was a big part of it is that I had never written anything with more than five people. And I just, I guess, I thought like, Okay, well, you should learn how to do that. If you would like to consider yourself a playwright. Yeah. The joy of writing for 11 people is enormous. Because it’s hard. But also, then you have 11 different perspectives to play with, right? And that is so fun. To have those 11 different perspectives weigh in on something. So I guess I started writing it, actually, before I went to the Stratford retreat, and then I finished it while it was there. And I sort of took it to Bob. And I was like, all I need you to tell me is whether or not I should keep writing this play. And he’s like, Well, no one’s going to produce it. And I said, No, no, I know. But like, is it worth me producing it? Like, is it worth me? Produce? Is it worth it for me to keep reading this place so that I can produce it right? And he’s like, yeah, absolutely. I liked this play a lot. And I was like, great, well, then I guess I’ll do that. Why not? It’s not like, you know, producing an 11 person play versus producing a two person play is a little bit different. Because there’s more people involved. Yeah. But the the action of producing the plays the same, right? It’s just more expensive. And then we did it in a festival. So then it was less expensive, like, it’s working out those nuts and bolts has is fine. That’s part of the artistic job. I think it’s figuring that out. And then, you know, there are people who I’m sure you know, who Well, I have spoken to people who said, Well, can you write it with less than 10? Because then someone could actually consider producing it. And I said, no, like, that’s the play, I wrote an 11 person play. I’ll write a nine person play someday, but this is my 11 person play.
Phil Rickaby
When you were writing on your writing the play? Were there points where you were worried that that there were characters that weren’t like, they were being lost?
Rob Kempson
Totally. Oh, my gosh, all the time? Yeah, absolutely. I ended up like doing several sort of readings to myself where I had like a square of paper on my desk, and then a bunch of pennies. And I would put, because it’s all happens in one room. So put the penny in when the character was entered, and then take them out when they exited. Because otherwise I would forget to have them exit over there or forget to have a mentor or, and just write them but and so that you know that that sort of technical stuff is fun to figure out and figure out where they could all go and what all their exits are and why they’re exiting and all of that sort of business, but I don’t like I I just figured it out. I guess I like yeah, you lose track of people all the time. But I think there were I knew enough about the play and I knew enough about the characters in the play. That there were, I would say in that play there. Like for people who who don’t Whoo hoo have a specific amount of time on stage. And it is not the whole play, right. And there’s a reason why they’re there. And they must be in the play. But they are only on stage for a specific amount of time. Right? So that makes it a bit easier because then all you know, then it’s really a seven person play with for sort of ancillary characters.
Phil Rickaby
To get back to trigonometry. You were just when I came in, you were saying that you hadn’t rehearsed in January. Yeah. And then had some time where you could be a producer. Yeah. And now you’re back into rehearsing? Yeah. Yeah. Because you open this play like
Rob Kempson
we open next Thursday, Thursday on March 16. March 16. To the 25th Buy tickets now where? Factory Theatre studio on the studio? And yeah, we I mean, it’s a regular rent. We were nice. We opened on Thursday, we closed the following Saturday, etc. Yeah. Tickets are $15 for arts workers or $20. For everyone else. And they are available at Foundry theatre.ca, or by calling the Factory Theatre box office, which is 416-504-9971. Wow, wow. written it out. And we also have more information, we have a website that we set up for the play. Let’s trigonometry that play.com Right, people can check it that
Phil Rickaby
that rehearsal process that you have rehearsing in January, and then some time off? Yeah. Was that by design? Or was that just the way that schedules were? No,
Rob Kempson
it was actually it was totally just actor schedules. So I certainly wrote the play with Rose Napoli in mind for one character. She’s a good friend of mine and a brilliant actor. And so I wanted her to play this role. And she’s currently in a show in Barrie that I’m going to see tomorrow that I’m very excited with Takus, free called offline. And it’s their collective show. That rose ended up becoming sort of the one of two sort of head writers on and because of her rehearsal process for that we could rehearse before she left and then we could open after she comes back, which is pretty much what we’re doing. But but as it’s turned out, Andy trade Hart, who’s also in that collective is our sound designer first trigonometry. And our stage manager for trigonometry. Is the apprentice stage manager on that show. So well. Yeah, I am, I will say this, this idea of rehearsing though, you know, a month out from your show, for two weeks, and then taking a month off is from rehearsals really useful as a producer, because you also have, you know, your promotional shots and your rehearsal shots and material, but also really useful. Because, as I saw today, so much of what we did in that rehearsal has really settled. People really, the character isn’t in its formation stages, the character is formed, right? So now the brush up is just really a memorization brush up, do you remember where you stand when and what the next line is? But the intentions are all clear. And the the subtext is all clear. And you know, all that Table Table work stuff has a lot more time to settle in. So it certainly wasn’t a by design process. But it might be one that I designed in the future, because it’s ended up working. I mean, knock on wood, it’s ended up working really well so far. So we hope that continues to work well into opening.
Phil Rickaby
Have you noticed a difference in the way that like, from that last rehearsal to this brush up? Didn’t things settle more like the what’s the difference in the way that the characters are from that last one to well,
Rob Kempson
if we had, you know, the the final rehearsal before? If we had been going into tech, right after that rehearsal, I would have been nervous. Not because I mean, they’re all brilliant actors, but they’re brilliant actors who had been working in a two week rehearsal process, and not even full days in those two weeks, you know, and so they’re accessing this material. It’s a 75 minute play, but it’s just talking. And it’s a it’s a dense, sort of, it’s not dense. It’s, it’s complex, and it’s interweaving. So once you figure out the story, for each of those characters, you know, that takes three days in and of itself. Yes. And so everything felt like we were just scraping the surface of it, you know, we were, they could do it. They moved in all the right ways. They shouted at all the right times and whispered all the right times and made jokes and all the stuff that you do. But today, what we started to find was really Deep settling into an actual character perspective on all those things. So you’re seeing it come from not just a really skilled actor who can make it look seamless, but actually an actual character on stage. And that would have happened in the run for sure. It had we ran after we rehearsed the first time, but it maybe wouldn’t have happened by opening night. Right. You know, and, and I think that that’s one of the dangers that happens in Canadian theatre all the time, is that because so many of our rehearsal processes are so short, we always get there, the actors always get there. Yeah, they maybe don’t get there right away. And, and, you know, if we are doing things like taking reviews into consideration, etc, we, you know, we all know that reviews are a part of an artistic ecology, but maybe not the be all and end all of it. But that can be nerve wracking, knowing that, you know, you’re arriving on opening night, and you’re not quite as prepared as you’d like to be. Yeah. Whereas I feel like this kind of process, at least for me this time, and, you know, talk to the actors, maybe they tell you something different than, for me, it’s felt, it’s felt a lot calmer, because we’ve been able to really sink our teeth into something, and then settle in it, and then ask even more intelligent questions later on.
Phil Rickaby
You. So in terms of not just the performances, but the comfort with the material has deepened. I mean,
Rob Kempson
I hope so. Certainly, like, you know, right now, they’re all stressed about learning, of course, because there’s lots of lines and it’s contemporary tech. So it’s all interruptions and cut offs, and all that sort of annoying stuff. They were telling me today that they wish that it was Shakespeare because then it would be easier to memorise but yeah, but they but I mean comfortability with the material. Because we’ve also worked it out. We haven’t figured it out already. Yeah. Yeah. Just a matter of remembering just a matter of remembering. Yeah. Which, you know, is no small, small task, but that they, I think are up for it
Phil Rickaby
in terms of the so all this this, this? More than more than a, I guess, almost a month of of not rehearsing when you’ve been doing the production stuff. Yeah. Do you thrive on that? Or is that something that you just sort of suffer through? Not rehearsing? No, the like, producing, like, Oh, sir, his job? Well, yeah,
Rob Kempson
I mean, again, like, I’m lucky that I’m working with an actual producer, right, Lisa Lee is incredible. So I’m really supporting her. And working primarily, in the regular director sort of role, like talking to designers and that kind of thing. So I but I liked all of that. And I mean, I, I like thinking about, you know, what Instagram posts were putting up this week, and how and why and all of that, I like thinking about what, you know, the marketing plan and what is coming up next, and when we’re all going to change our cover photo on Facebook and, and talking to the graphic designer about what we want the images for the show to look like and all of those sorts of pieces of it. I think our artistic processes, I think so often, like artists tend to poopoo producing as something you know, that’s unnecessary evil, but Right, there’s are there it’s an art form in and of itself. Yeah. And, again, like working with someone as talented and skilled, as Lisa Lee means that it’s seamless. And the parts where I support her in that producing work are just like joyful, because you work with someone who’s a genius. Yeah. Which is great,
Phil Rickaby
which is more a little less stressful than then trying to figure it all out yourself. Yeah. Also, like
Rob Kempson
I have a role with students, which is that, you know, when I adjudicate a festival or something, I tell them that they’re not allowed to do more than two jobs on a show, right? And so if I was writer, director and producer of this play, that would be too many things, too many things. Because you can’t do three things really well. No, doing too well, is possible, but hard. So like, I’m willing to make that hard sort of choice. But I’m not willing to make the insane choice which is doing three
Phil Rickaby
has it been difficult to switch switch hats from from playwright to director?
Rob Kempson
Yes. I. My intention is not to direct my own work always at but for these three plays I have, just because, well, for the most part, if I’m going to, if I’m going to spend a bunch of money producing plays independently, which is exclusively and exercising spending money and not making it, then I’d like to spend money getting two credits, the director and a writer, which is just the reality of making theatre in Canada. I have to buy myself credits that I’d like to buy them in both of the worlds that I’d like to be hired in. Yeah, but it’s difficult. It’s also fun. I’ve sort of created over the past three shows this alter ego named Fritz who is The playwright Rob. And so when we’re in the room, there are days when we’re doing dramaturgical work. But if we have a question about the script that we can’t solve, or I can’t solve as a director. That’s a question for Fritz and meaning that I will not look at that until I go home and look at it in a writer brain, and I try to keep that really secure. Separation between director Rob and writer Rob, because? Well, because I think it makes me better at both of those jobs. So if I write something and I find that that is the, you know, the right cadence or the right pacing or whatever, and then I go to direct it, and it doesn’t work, the easy choice would be to change it right away, right into something that works. Yeah. But actually, the job of a director is to make it work. And so I try to approach my own writing in the same way because there’s a reason I wrote it that way. Maybe I don’t know what that is yet. But yeah. And so I try to work it from a directing perspective first, and then if I can’t fix it, that’s when I leave it for for its to take care of right later on.
Phil Rickaby
was really, really a good idea. Because I found myself in those like, oh, then it’s a bit then you just like fix everything. Well, then you’ve never Yeah, you never stop. Yeah, like they’re like
Rob Kempson
changes that I’ll make in rehearsal for sure. But, but it’s it’s a no, it’s a rabbit hole. Like you’ll just go down forever. Yeah, yeah.
Phil Rickaby
Are you on social media? Yeah. What do you got?
Rob Kempson
No, I’m everything. I got Facebook and Instagram and Twitter. I mean, I have a Snapchat but like, that’s not a real it’s not
Phil Rickaby
a real thing. Now. What do you what are your your Twitter?
Rob Kempson
Oh, yeah, he’s reminds my handle for all things is, underscore or rob underscore Kempson. So just my name with an underscore in between, which is how you would find me on Twitter or Instagram. And because we don’t, timeshare, which is the company that’s producing this, which is a fake company, it’s like an unaccompanied, right. We’re not like we don’t have a Facebook page that you should like or anything like that. So you can just, you know, check out my face. We have a Facebook event for the show,
Phil Rickaby
right? All of those sorts. And you have you have a website, though.
Rob Kempson
I do I have a personal website. Yeah, it’s Rob kempson.com. You can also actually, I don’t even think I have any information about trigonometry.
Phil Rickaby
You actually you don’t because I was looking at that today. Fortunately, fortunately, you do have a website for checking out
Rob Kempson
I do we have just triggered trigonometry to play.com is the trigonometry website. And that is also a reflection on us sort of as this unaccompanied for each new play. We make a new website and we just say like, this is all the information you use to do this play, right? Because chances are not that good that you want to know about, like the last place that my fake company printers. I sometimes think that companies that are driven by a single directorial voice or a single write writing voice, are not so much companies is actually just like, the collected works of that artist. Yeah. And that’s really valuable. But I think we have a tendency to want to call those companies something, something which seems redundant to me. I mean, in dance, they don’t do that. No, just you know, it’s Peggy baker dance, which is Peggy Baker’s work and, and I really appreciate that clarity. And, and I’ll I also know that when I go to see a show, I am thinking about which artists have worked on it. And so if it’s not, if it’s always the same artists at the top of that echelon, then that’s actually just the work of that artists that were interested in. So I’m not making I’m not gonna say that timeshare will never become a, you know, a real company. But right now, certainly, that’s not the intention. It’s just a bank account, and a forum by which I can produce work and other people can produce work under it as well.
Phil Rickaby
I wasn’t one of those interesting questions of what to do, especially when you’re in that situation when you are like writing and producing your own work. Do you call it like Ron Kempson productions or do you? Yeah, like, what do you do with that? I’ve gone back and forth on that myself.
Rob Kempson
We call it we call it timeshare, because it is a timeshare. So the the intention of the company is that anyone who’s part of our collective can choose to produce under that title. They can choose to apply for grants under that title they can choose to and other people have. So right now that’s what it’ll be. It’ll be sort of a band card that gets passed around. Yeah, we’ll see. It’s great. How long that lasts.
Phil Rickaby
Well, this has been great. Thank you so much for for talking to me. Oh my gosh, thank
Rob Kempson
you. Thank you so much for taking interest in the show and taking the time to come all the way up here and Hannah, my basement absolutely